Columnists / OP-ED

Gov. Dannel Malloy is calling for reform of some of the state's draconian sentencing laws, proposing that mere drug possession be a misdemeanor, and calling for the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses.

Greetings from the private sector. Many of you knew me from the 11 years I spent in the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel. I became the head of the office in July 2013 and retired as of Feb. 1. I am now back to being just another lawyer, staffing the New Haven office of Geraghty & Bonnano.

As I write this, I am sitting in Provincetown. The sun has just come out after a hellacious 24-hour nor'easter, which dumped more snow here, where two inches is a huge storm, than I have often seen in Vermont, where they measure it in yards instead of inches.

Now that we've abolished the death penalty in Connecticut, at least insofar as future cases are concerned, the fate of those currently on death row being much at issue, there is really no cause for jurors ever lawfully to consider the consequences of a guilty verdict.

The Affordable Care Act was designed to prevent health insurers from discriminating against people based on health status, but a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine questions how effective those protections really are.

On the rare occasions on which I step into either the family courts or the juvenile courts of this state, I always feel like a stranger in a strange land. The procedures are different. The law is different. I meet different judges and different lawyers.

On the rare occasions on which I step into either the family courts or the juvenile courts of this state, I always feel like a stranger in a strange land. The procedures are different. The law is different. I meet different judges and different lawyers.

I came across a fascinating survey done by the Florida Bar the other day. That organization, like its counterpart in Connecticut, has a number of committees exploring such issues as the effects of technology on the practice, whether law schools need to be changed, and whether different approaches to bar admission and legal service delivery should be considered.

Do some of the adult victims of the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School bear responsibility for the deaths of the children slain during the attack? That is the troubling contention of a lawsuit that was initiated by the estates of two children on the second anniversary of the attack that killed 26 people at the Newtown school.

It is perhaps too much to assert that Hartford attorney Dan Klau plays a role roughly akin to conscience in my life, but he does try to correct the error of my ways. Thus, his emails recently tweaking me for writing in opposition to the Connecticut Supreme Court's ruling requiring Cassandra C. to undergo chemotherapy to treat her Hodgkin lymphoma.

"Truth is a matter of semantics, whether we like it or not," writes Michael Robotham in his novel "Suspect." What he has done in that sentence, perhaps unknowingly, is describe in a nutshell the modern American criminal justice system.

I was dismayed to read the recent Connecticut Law Tribune editorial ("Lowering the Bar for Environmental Intervenors," Jan. 5) advocating for restricting due process and appeal rights of environmental intervenors. This is the latest salvo in a years long battle by a coalition of special interests to roll back environmental protections in Connecticut and is a bad idea.

Though I am very unlikely to do any of them, I now understand that to communicate with another you can email, tweet, retweet, subtweet, poke, chat, snap, vine, pin, post, YouTube and a host of other things that seemingly change daily.

I've been reading the press reports about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's jury selection in Boston with a growing sense of ambivalence. Tsarnaev, you will recall, is the surviving suspect in the 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon.

Power, Moises Naim tells us, is everywhere on the decline: whether in the realm of corporations, the effective military reach of the state, or religion—leaders don't have the unquestioned clout they once enjoyed.

The shock waves from the killings at the Paris office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo continue. After the newspaper sold millions of copies of its first edition after the massacre, riots tore apart cities in francophone North Africa where the remnants of French colonialism continue to be felt.

Those of us walking on the wild side of the law are bemused that large firms are turning to flat-fee billing in order to keep legal fees down. Small firms have survived with flat-fee billing for a long time. Few clients can afford to pay hourly fees. But can law firms afford to survive on flat fees?

To say that our system of laws that regulates conduct between members of society is a complex entity is an understatement. While the principles underlying the passage of laws that prohibit criminal behavior and the description of behavior as criminal itself are fairly straightforward, there is almost nothing else beyond that which can be so classified.

I've never really thought of Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, as a prophet. The former general, politician and university president seemed more of a technocrat, a dry-as-dust sort of fellow fit for the 1950s, but not much more. He was Ozzie and Harriet's president; not mine.

Under current Fourth Amendment law, police are forgiven the use of such force if it was objectively reasonable for them to believe that they faced an imminent risk of harm. The trouble with most deadly force cases is that dead men can't talk.

Ferguson, Mo., state's attorney Robert McCulloch admits he presented evidence he knew to be false to the grand jury considering whether to charge Darren Wilson with murder or some other offense in the killing of Michael Brown. Disbarment would be an appropriate penalty for this feckless prosecutor.

Word on the street is that Koskoff, Koskoff & Beider is so wealthy the law firm weighs, rather than counts, its money. I hope that's true, because the fight the firm just picked against Bushmaster and others is going to cost plenty to litigate.

Occasionally, I get a call from a lawyer stating that an opponent has threatened, either explicitly or implicitly, that if a matter involving a claim against an attorney is not resolved quickly, the client may feel it necessary to file a criminal or grievance complaint.

I've managed to offend my friends and delight my critics by asserting that the Staten Island grand jury was correct not to indict New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the killing of Eric Garner.

The American Bar Foundation just published a provocative study which may answer one of the most troubling questions those of us who worry about courts and justice wrestle with: why do so many people not use lawyers for really serious problems?

Many people gather their knowledge about our justice system from novels, television shows and movies. An entire multimillion-dollar industry has been build off of fictional depictions of the criminal justice system.